The Pennsylvania GOP on Friday stood behind its assertion that the word jagoff is a profanity, even as many Western Pennsylvanians protested on Twitter that it isn't.

The party blurred out the word in a photo it tweeted Wednesday of a T-shirt that John Fetterman, the Democratic Party's nominee for lieutenant governor, sold during his campaign. The shirt said "Trump is a jagoff."

The tweet noted Bernie Sanders endorsed Fetterman, who is the mayor of Braddock, and said "his rise included selling T-shirts with profanity-laced attacks on President Trump."

"Does anybody think that that's the way to refer to the president of the United States, or a candidate for president," State Republican Party Chairman Val DiGiorgio said Friday morning. "That that's appropriate?"

Neither Fetterman nor a campaign spokeswoman responded to voicemails or an email Friday.

DiGiorgio wouldn't say what he thinks the word means. The Oxford English Dictionary defined it in 2016 as a "stupid, irritating, or contemptible person."

Even people who use it regularly say it can mean different things. Several Trib readers said in emails Friday that the word is a variant of "jackoff," and therefore a swear word.

"From our standpoint, it's not a profane word," said John Chamberlin, who created the website yajagoff.com six years ago in an effort to define the word.

Similarly, AFL-CIO President Rick Bloomingdale said in a statement condeming the GOP's tweet, "It's also a term that arguably describes certain political figures in a benevolent manner."

Chamberlin said he disagrees with the OED definition, since it leaves out one common use of the word among Pittsburghers as a term of affection, providing the following example:

"Like if I see you at a 20-year-reunion or at a wedding or something like that where I haven't seen you in a while, you say, 'hey, how have you been, ya jagoff?'"

He said it might be used in place of a swear word, for example as something you might say "if you're going across the Fort Pitt Bridge and someone cuts you off."

In an episode of a podcast he co-hosts, he asked Barbara Johnstone, a Carnegie Mellon University linguist who specializes in Pittsburghese, whether jagoff is a swear word.

Johnstone said the word is related to the Scots-Irish verb jag, which means to irritate somebody. And it is related to the phrase jaggerbush, used to describe thorny plants.

"Historically and for many older Pittsburghers, they grew up thinking it was maybe not a very nice thing to say to somebody, but an OK thing, and certainly not a swear word," she said. "But I think what's happened is many people have come to associate it with a word that actually is a vulgar word, which I won't say."

The word received broad attention after Pittsburgh-born billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban used it to describe Trump in 2016.

In response to a question Friday about whether he views the word as a profanity, Cuban replied via e-mail, "anyone who thinks jag off is a profanity is a jag off."

Wes Venteicher is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 412-380-5676, wventeicher@tribweb.com or via Twitter @wesventeicher.

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